Your analogy doesn't fit E

because in E

, every miner
IS a mining company - none of us work for anyone but ourselves. The equipment is ours, the rings belong to no one, the profits are entirely ours. As for demand exceeding any and all rational need, if we were talking about 7B people on a single planet, yes, you'd be right, but we're talking about trillions of people spread across tens of thousands of worlds. The demand is astronomical and, while supply is, essentially, unlimited (due to the entire galaxy being a source), it still needs to be mined before it can be used.